All the wonderful birds and wildlife of Lancashire, Cheshire, North Wales and further

14/10/2016 Spurn, East Yorkshire

Siberian Accentor: Probably the biggest bird of the year a 2nd for Britain but only after the 1st record being found a week ago in Shetland.

Found by Lance Degnan, congratulations!

This species is a native of northern Siberia, on both sides of the Ural Mountains and a casual visitor in western and northern Alaska and the outer Aleutians. So it's a bird many people thought they would never see on the shores of the UK.

It was crazy there were huge numbers of twitchers from across the country and so Spurn Bird Obs lads had organised a queuing and viewing system. People can see the bird for ten minutes, then go to the back of the queue and wait their turn again.

The bird was feeding in a small yard at the back of some houses near Viccars Lane. This small site could only allow around 150 people to look over the fence to view the bird so without the queuing system it would have been chaos!

Big thumbs up and thanks to the lads from Spurn who did a brilliant job of organising viewing of the bird.

Patrick and I took a few goes on the merry-go-round and queued up several times to view the bird and each time got increasingly better views of this super gorgeous little bird!

The accentor is a distant relative of the common British dunnock but is distinguished by its black and creamy facial markings, here is a good comparison.

Shore Lark: Once we had our fill of the sib acc and had enough of the crowds, we headed down to the Bulebell Carpark to see one of my favourite birds, the Shore Lark.

In typical Shore Lark fashion the bird was showing incredibly well as it hunkered down out of the blustery easterly winds.

I would like to give a special thanks to Patrick who pointed out that I was almost laying in dog turd as in typical 'Austin' fashion I was laying down on the ground with my camera trying to get a better shot of the bird.

Dusky Warbler: There are times when Spurn is really good and this was definitely one of these times!

As we left the Shore Lark we decided to check out Langham Lane and find something decent.

However we only got half way down before news came over the radio saying there had been a Dusky Warbler caught and rung and will be released in Church Field.

We turned around and with a hurried pace made it in time for the showing and release.

With the huge number of birders visiting Spurn after ticking the sib acc Church Field is chocca, with at least 300 people crowding around the edge of the field.

This was mine and Patricks first Dusky and it was such a privilege to see the bird at close quarters, in the hand.

Its far from a little brown job, a very distinct bird with unstreaked brown back and buff underparts and a prominent whitish supercilium.

The day ended with several superb views of three Ring Ouzel, one Redstart at Sammy's Point and Firecrest in the Crown & Anchor car park.

Overall a brilliant day with great company, excellent birds and plenty of friendly familiar faces, many from the North West.